Doom Insanity

From DoomWiki.org

Doom Insanity, officially cased as DOOM iNsAnItY and stylistically represented in ASCII art as *-D-*-*-O-*-*-O-*-*-M-* I N S A N I T Y, is a sister document to the Official Doom FAQ, and began as an originally small section of that document which gradually took on a life of its own. Like the FAQ, it was also authored by Hank Leukart as a collection of humorous emails and postings to various Usenet groups in the wake of the massive online excitement over the upcoming release of Doom.

A tongue-in-cheek suggestion that id Software should appease Usenet posters disappointed over the apparent delay of Doom for a few months by instead making a game where angry players would take on the employees of id Software.

A strictly humorous suggestion that impatient players who cannot wait for Doom's release should organize a real-life deathmatch in an abandoned warehouse.

"We could throw some shotgun shells and ammo boxes randomly around the place, along with some first-aid kits (fine for light grazes from perhaps a .22 calibre round but not much good for a 12 gauge belly wound :) )..."

An email forwarded by John Romero from one Douglas Howell, a beta tester who had been dismissed along with the entire current group of testers, which makes light of the incident by use of double entendre for "joystick." Such jokes were quite common in 1993 after the John and Lorena Bobbitt incident. This humorous email evidently earned its author reinstatement as a beta tester.

"The severed joystick was later found by police on a street corner. Apparently id had fled the scene with the sliced piece still in hand and tossed it out a car window."

A play about Doom written in the style of an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, where a marine, an imp and a baron of Hell riff sarcastically on a (likely fictional) Usenet post which claims that playing Doom makes one susceptible to demonic influence.

Several top ten lists are included, these having become popular due to the 1992 debut of the Late Show with David Letterman, where this remained a regular feature of the nightly stand-up routine until Letterman's departure in 2015.

A section about people reporting the phenomenon of Doom-related dreams.

Pixelated Demons - A dream about shooting pixelated demons with a shotgun.

The Mythical Beta Releases - A dream about finding a beta release of Doom on the Internet, the holy grail of the community at the time spurred on by consistent rumors of such being leaked by one or more of the testers.

You Don't Take Mastercard?! - A dream that Doom was released to retail stores, but the dreamer could not buy it due to the store not accepting his credit card.

"When I opened my wallet, it was empty. And they wouldn't accept credit or personal checks... I spent the rest of the night trying to scrounge up the cash to buy it. It was not a pretty sight!"